I was shopping in a big box retailer recently. (I almost said "one of our local big box retailers", but of course there's no such thing.) What caught my eye was a box of coffee, prominently labeled "Fair Trade". The next thing I noticed, though, was that the box didn't contain what I think of as coffee at all. No beans. Not even ground up beans. Simply liquid in little plastic cups.

My friend Neil Verma is a Harper Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he teaches a sequence of classes in media aesthetics for undergraduates.

Full disclosure - I am an ECHO customer. We installed Echo360 to as a presentation capture system for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program in which I work on. The reason we chose Echo360 for our new blended program was that: a) we liked the appliance based model (reliability, security etc.), b) we liked the Echo360 player and the ability to create and publish multiple file types to multiple publishing platforms, and c) we liked the people at Echo360.

While Sue O’Doherty prepares for the empty nest, I’m happy to have our nest refilled this week as our daughter is home for spring break. She drove home Saturday and has been catching up on both sleep and reading so far.

Anyone interested in the global growth of private higher education (PHE) should have a closer look at the last two decades in Poland. Poland is the 6th largest higher education system in the European Union (1.9 million students), with the largest student body and highest enrollment in the private sector (633.000 students and 33.3% in 2009). After twenty years of continuous growth, the sector suffered a 10% decline in enrollments in 2009.

Bill McKibben has an excellent piece in today's Guardian. His main point is that climate change is decreasing (has decreased) the margin of safety that was factored into a whole slew of major societal design decisions. It's well worth a read.

A new correspondent whose wife, a teacher, is about to become a stay-at-home Mom writes:I have queried the Internet, and there really is no good, definitive advice article on the topic of "how to maintain a healthy marriage when transitioning from a dual income home to a single income". We are aware that having a stay-at-home-mother will ease a lot of stress and make life easier, but life assures us that every situation will have its obstacles. I am very curious on what your obstacles were, as well as your wife's.